Rainer Forst’s constructivism argues that a right to justification provides a reasonably non-rejectable foundation of justice. With an exemplary focus on his attempt to ground human rights, I argue that this right cannot provide such a foundation. To accord to others such a right is to include them in the scope of discursive respect. But it is reasonably contested whether we should accord to others equal discursive respect. It follows that Forst’s constructivism cannot ground human rights, or justice, categorically. At (...) best, it can ground them hypothetically. This opens the door wide for ethical foundations of human rights. (shrink)

The following claims are independently plausible but jointly inconsistent: (1) epistemic deontologism is correct (i.e., there are some beliefs we ought to have, and some beliefs we ought not to have); (2) we have no voluntary control over our beliefs; (3) S’s lack of control over whether she φs implies that S has no obligation to φ or to not φ (i.e., ought-implies-can). The point of this paper is to argue that there are active and passive aspects of belief, which (...) can come apart, and to argue that deontological epistemic evaluations apply to the active aspect of belief. (shrink)

It is sometimes claimed that conciliatory views on disagreement ultimately lead to either global or widespread scepticism. This is deemed to be a serious problem for conciliationism either because scepticism of either kind is a patently untenable stance or because it poses a serious threat to our intellectual and social lives. In this paper, I first argue that the alleged untenability of both types of scepticism is far from being obvious and should therefore be established rather than taken for granted, (...) and then that those who reject them because of the threat they pose surprisingly confuse pragmatic reasons with epistemic reasons. (shrink)

Epistemic contextualism was devised mainly to provide a solution to the problem of skepticism based on a thesis about the truth conditions of knowledge attributing sentences. In this paper, I’ll examine two possible semantic bases of epistemic contextualism i.e., (i) the epistemic standard is an unarticulated constituent, (ii) the epistemic standard is a hidden variable. After showing that the unarticulated constituent thesis is incompatible with epistemic contextualism, I’ll argue that the hidden variable account remains unconvincing. My aim in this paper (...) is to show that questions remain that must be answered before epistemic contextualism can claim success in the project of resolving skepticism. (shrink)

From its very inception, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sought to leave an accurate and complete record of its history. On April 6,1830, the date of the organization of the church, a revelation was given to Joseph Smith which began, "Behold, there shall be a record ..

This essay examines the role of friendship in the realization of aristotle's conception of happiness or "eudaimonia". i argue that friendship serves most importantly as the epistemological tool by which the individual recognizes himself as happy. the essay also concludes that, while friends play a part in the attainment of "eudaimonia", the individual, himself, the only one who can actualize his potential to be happy.

... Historian D. Michael Quinn has declared that God has, in every millennia, had his prophets employ what we call magic in manifesting God's Page 5. ... Brodie, Fawn M. No Man Knows My History : The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet. New York: AA Knopf, 1945. ..